South Africa’s Kevin Lerena is training at the famous Peacock Gym adjacent to the old London docks in Canning Town under the guidance of his trainer Peter Smith for his challenge against Daniel Dubois from London, for the WBA heavyweight championship at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Tottenham in London on Saturday night.
The fight will be shown live on SuperSport.
The gym is managed by Tony and Martin Powers and this augurs well for Lerena. Top fighters like the Klitschko brothers, Johnny Tapia, John Ruiz, Antonio Barrera, Gerald McLennan, and South Africa’s Vuyani Bungu have trained there
Other top fighters who have sparred there are Lennox Lewis, Naseem Hamed, Steve Collins, Ricky Hatton, Chris Eubank, and Amir Khan.
Some of the world’s leading trainers like Angelo Dundee, Eddie Futch, Emmanuel Steward, and Freddie Roach have used the gym.
This must rub off on the 30-year-old Lerena (28-1; 14), who is the WBA Intercontinental heavyweight champion, when he challenges the 25-year-old Dubois for the WBA regular heavyweight title.
Dubois (18-1; 17), who has also trained at the Peacock Gym, will be making the first defence of his title that he won in June when he stopped Trevor Bryan in the fourth round.
His only defeat came against Joe Joyce in November 2020 when he was stopped in the tenth round after a fractured eye socket.
Some critics are of the opinion that he did not deserve the push he got after the defeat by Joyce.
Despite having 17 victories inside the distance, if Lerena takes the fight to him he might not be clever enough to change his game plan.
Even though Lerena has scored wins over heavyweights Sefer Seferi, Firat Arslan, Patrick Ferguson, Bogdan Dinu, and Mariusz Wach he will find Dubois a different challenge.
Dubois has all the advantages in height, reach, and size, but Lerena is one of the best conditioned fighters to come out of South Africa and will be there all the way.
Most of the betting sites have Dubois as the favourite.